The adoption of e-mail has occurred at an unprecedented pace. Of routine computer users, most now have or soon will have an e-mail address. Many have more than one e-mail address, e.g., one for work and another for home. E-mail offers unparalleled convenience of written communication.
Because of the resources required to install and maintain an e-mail server, various companies have emerged offering e-mail outsourcing in which the e-mail server is provided by a third party outside the organization. E-mail outsourcing off-loads the responsibility for providing and maintaining e-mail service without necessitating any change in domain or e-mail addresses. In an outsourcing approach, E-mail is retrieved from an off-site e-mail server provided and maintained by the e-mail outsourcing company.
Lacking in the prior art is a way to deliver messages to various destinations according to “policy” decisions, which is to say decisions based on configured profiles. Further lacking is a way to make such policy decisions on a user-by-user basis in a managed email service.